Campaign Imminent: Blue Diamond taps media AOR, CEO amid spikes in spend (Score 48)

Sales Lead: Almond cooperative Blue Diamond (BD) selected Spark Foundry as its new media AOR.

• The agency will now handle all media planning and buying duties.
  • These include mass media, digital media, and retail media both on and off e-Commerce platforms.
• BD chose Spark Foundry for its buying power, strategic insights, and progressive digital media world approach, per media director Rebecca Erlich.
• This hire replaces Harmelin Media, BD's incumbent media AOR since 2011.
• We predicted another agency review would follow the company's appointment of creative AOR McKinney around now.
• The company will likely:
  • Shift strategy
  • Launch a new campaign
  • Keep increasing spend
  • Seek additional new agency partners
• Target demographic: 
  • ​​​​​​​A wide target demographic ranging from Gen-Z through Gen-X

Recent leadership shifts:

• This announcement closely follows BD's January 2023 appointment of president and CEO Kai Bockmann.
• Previously the president and COO at Saputo, Bockmann holds a marketing and finance BBA from Simon Fraser University.
• He succeeded incumbent president and CEO Mark Jansen, who retired the same month.

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend)
  • Refer to this chart for recent (and sharply increasing) national TV spend for BD's top brands, Almond Breeze and Blue Diamond Almonds. 
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: Since the beginning of 2023, BD has spent roughly $6m on digital ads, more than 4x the roughly $1.4m spent by this point last year.
  • YTD data: The company has earned an estimated 723.6m digital impressions YTD via Facebook (58%), Instagram (24%), YouTube (14%), desktop video (3%), and desktop display (1%) ads.
  • Last year: BD spent approximately $6.8m on this channel in 2022, down 14% from the approximately $7.9m spent in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The company utilizes local broadcast, digital, print, OOH, and Google Ads.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: Agency reviews often follow one another closely, so get in touch soon to offer PR, digital analytics, experiential, influencer, and/or multicultural services.
• Current agency roster:
  • Spark Foundry: Media AOR (April 2023)
  • McKinney: Creative AOR (May 2022)
  • MullenLowe LA: Creative agency partner
  • TBWA \ Chiat \ Day: Creative agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix.